Tuesday, February 7

Brother can you spare a dime Penny?

There's been a lot of talk about Earl Watson coming to Seattle, but here's something I hadn't heard until today:

Another persistent rumor has the Knicks finally unloading Penny Hardaway 's expiring $15.75 million contract on Seattle for Reggie Evans, Flip Murray and Vitaly Potapenko .That would help the cash-strapped Sonics for next season, but it wouldn't appear to do much to help the Knicks. Which, in my cynical opinion, is why this trade probably will go through.

To me, the fly in the ointment for that deal is what Denver winds up with. Seattle and NYK will both come out ahead, but for the Nuggets to lose K-Mart, probably lose Nene in the offseason to free agency, and only have Mr. Glass in return seems unlikely. Unless getting Hardaway, Evans, and Murray's expiring contracts is something they would want.

Further, from what I understand of the CBA (which is admittedly not much), sending Murray and Evans to one team would adversely affect those players' rights in the upcoming offseason. Most likely, their agents would veto that trade.

heard somewhere today that George Karl and Kmart aren't seeing eye2eye, and that mr. martin's gonna be in another uni by the trading deadline... so they (denver) might have incentive to do this for addition-by-subtraction purposes. Same could be said for seattle's deal in this scenario.

Well, during the upcoming off-season, Reggie Evans and Ronald "Flip "Murray aren't likely to receive contracts that are worth more than the mid-level exception; thus, their agents shouldn't prevent them from being traded to the same team.

In addition, as has been previously mentioned here, Kenyon Martin isn't on the same page with George Karl. Moreover, Kiki Vandeweghe needs to clear salary for 2006-2007, so that he'll have enough money to re-sign Maybyner "Nenê" Hilario during the upcoming off-season.

Lastly, why wouldn't New York Knicks president Isiah Thomas want an overpaid power forward such as Danny Fortson? I mean, without a shadow of a doubt, Fortson fits right in with the likes of Malik Rose and Maurice Taylor.

If the Denver Nuggets need to be further compensated to complete the above trade proposal, then the New York Knicks could also send the Nuggets a 2006 NBA first-round draft pick [via the Denver Nuggets through the New Jersey Nets and the Toronto Raptors] -- yeah, amazingly enough, the Knicks currently have the Nuggets first-round selection in the 2006 NBA Draft, which was originally dealt away in the Nets/Nuggets Kenyon Martin trade -- in addition, the Seattle Supersonics could also send the Nuggets the draft rights of power forward Peter Fehse, the draft rights of small forward Mickaël Gelabale, and the draft rights of point guard Paccelis Morlende. Hell, if I were in Rick Sund's position, then I'd be willing to trade Fehse, Gelabale, and Morlende for nothing more than some money in cash considerations.